A change in attitude

I made a small change to my blog header: instead of saying, "using humor and alternative medicine in my fight", I say, "using humor and alternative medicine in my healing".

So, what's the difference? I'm not sure I can articulate it clearly as of yet. However, I decided to make the change because of something Renee said to me a few months ago, when I was worried about the lung tumors growing. She suggested that maybe what I needed to do in my visualizations, rather than imagine fighting and killing the cancer cells, to "love them to death". I imagined my tumors related to various old and new issues of mine and in that case, rather than trying to rid my body of those issues, embracing them and accepting them as part of me. Don't try to ignore the issues - but face them and love them.

Every so often, when I remember, I do try that visualization . . . I think the trick, though is to sustain the visualization for longer than what I'm doing.

In the end, loving the issues/tumors/illness is more about healing than fighting. That's what we're trying to do with acupuncture is to help my body heal so that cancer can't rear its ugly head anymore.

I have done some thinking about why I had a relapse of cancer after all the treatment I received in 2002-2003. The treatments probably helped contain the cancer for awhile until my body was inundated with various stressors - like the memory foam mattress and relationship-stuff - so the cancer got the upper hand. It never really went away. Now, what I need to do is to heal . . . fighting it only got me so far. It's time to try another tactic.

It was a beautiful fall day here today. This whole week-end was amazing warm for late October/early November: daytime temps were in the 60s. Unusual . . . but I'm not complaining!